Ogun State governor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun, fielded questions from some select editors during the week on a wide range of issues germane to the polity nationally and in his state, as well as his personal disposition to governance. WOLE EFUNNUGA was there. Excerpts:

HOW well are you combining all the various infrastructure development projects embarked upon by your administration with what is now known in the South-West geopolitical zone as the politics a of stomach infrastructure?

I will continue to maintain my position that it will be an insult on our people to reduce governance to the distribution of kerosene and rice. It is an insult that will undermine the memory of the great leaders that our state has produced. While I agree that governance is about the people, it cannot be reduced to that level.

The problem is that, over the years, governments have failed and poverty has escalated. Successive governments have not applied any holistic approach to providing succour to the people. Certain solutions that are needed to address the issue of unemployment have been neglected or ignored. One of such solutions is provision of electricity. The issue of unemployment is widespread and that makes poverty to escalate in the land. The unemployed in Ogun State will be close to 500,000 because of the presence of many higher institutions in the state and that is very bad for us.

We have to go back to the basics and address those issues that brought us to this sorry pass. We should start creating wealth for the people. It is not about giving them fish but teaching them how to fish and creating the enabling environment for them to be productive. The poverty level is too high and it won’t be tackled by distributing rice. I give rice too. Yes, I give rice to people during festive periods and I had been doing that long before I started playing partisan politics. It is not to be giving rice to secure votes during elections. That is bad. That is fraudulent. That is an insult to our people. But the fact remains that the unemployment rate is too high. That is what we need to address as government. Unfortunately, many of these issues rest with the Federal Government.

When we came in, we said we wanted to employ 10,000 people for civil service jobs but close to 70,000 people applied. In fact, at a point, we had to stop allowing people to apply because it was simply overwhelming. Recently, we announced that we would recruit 2,000 environmental marshals and over 50,000 people, including doctorate degree holders, applied. That is dangerous for us as a nation. We are giving too much stress to our youths. The government must put in place a holistic approach to address the issue of poverty.

What lessons did you learn from the Ekiti elections?

I disagree that the good people of Ekiti voted the way they did because some people gave them rice. The people of Ekiti are very educated. There must be some other things that happened that people are yet to know and appreciate. We have some lessons we have picked from the Ekiti episode which we have reflected here.

What are you then doing to address the issue of poverty and unemployment?

In Ogun State, what I am doing is to provide the enabling environment through solid infrastructure for industrialists to come to the state. We are doing this by working on our financial base. I inherited an IGR of N730 million in 2011 and with the help of God, we are now on average of N5.2bn per month.  We attained this level without inconveniencing our people. We had to think out of the box to generate money and, with the aid of God, we have been successful so far. This is why we have been able to do so many things to improve the welfare of our people. We realised that we need to attract investors to Ogun state.  I am happy to say there are 58 new companies now in Ogun state and more are still coming.

We go out of our way to invite the companies to come to Ogun. The state is now an industrial hub. We are the largest industrial base in Nigeria presently. Interestingly, as those companies come in, they employ our people and we try to reduce unemployment. Again, we have many youth empowerment programmes aimed at creating entrepreneurs out of our youths. Our ministries of Commerce and Industry, Women Affairs and Social Development, Community Development and Co-operatives, Agriculture, Vocational Education Board as well as The Uplift Foundation run by the wife of the governor have many entrepreneurial development programmes aimed at making youths self employed and becoming employers of labour.
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http://tribune.com.ng/interviews/item/14695-daniel-set-booby-traps-all-over-ogun-for-me-amosun